The Bush administration claims it is promoting democracy and human rights across the Middle East. But for those of us in Iran who are fighting for these basic freedoms, the White House's policy is doing more harm than good.

When President Bush labeled Iran as part of "the axis of evil" in his 2002 State of the Union Address, his comment caused shock as well as outrage in Iran. Understandably, we found it insulting for our country of nearly 70 million people to be considered evil en masse.

Bush's simplistic designation also ignored the ongoing struggle for change in our country. As we fight for basic human rights in Iran, reform-minded journalists and civil-society activists are engaged in an intense struggle against fundamentalists and conservatives. Inside Iran itself, Bush's remark dramatically changed the scene for Iranians fighting for reform. His incendiary comment gave the conservative establishment the perfect pretext to justify its crackdown on dissent. Journalists and critics are now labeled "agents of the U.S. government." The growing tension between the United States and Iran has overshadowed our struggle for reform at home.

At Hayateno, the newspaper where I worked in Tehran, 4 of the 5 journalists who shared an office with me were imprisoned because of their critical writings. As the Iranian government began to crack down on the press and shutter our independent papers, journalists like me shifted to the Internet. For Iranian journalists and activists, the Internet has become a platform where we can freely express our ideas and criticize the government. As the government stifles the press, Iranians rely increasingly on the Internet for news and opinion. Nearly 100,000 blogs have sprung up in Iran, according to blog service providers in and outside of Iran.

While the Iranian authorities have largely managed to quash dissent in print, they are now trying to crush it online. A year ago, the Iranian judiciary detained 20 Internet journalists and bloggers, including me. We were detained in solitary confinement, tortured and forced to make false confessions. Such repression is aimed at spreading fear and intimidation through the Internet community.

But young Iranians reacted strongly to these arrests. They staged sit-ins and published public letters condemning the detentions. At a great risk, they demonstrated their commitment to fight repression. Many of us were set free after protests at home and abroad.

In a country where more than two-thirds of the population is under 30, the energy of young Iranians is concentrated in the universities, nongovernmental organizations and the press. Students, human-rights activists and journalists are fighting against the government crackdown on basic human rights. At the same time, we are promoting a democratic culture at the grassroots level. Today, the Iranian authorities are intensifying their crackdown on journalists, human-rights lawyers, women's-rights activists and students.

But we are facing a struggle on a second front as well: Across-the-board U.S. economic sanctions against Iran are isolating the country's reform constituency from the rest of the world. Recently, I logged onto my Web site only to find it disabled. When I contacted my service provider in Tehran, the company informed me that GoDaddy.com, the American corporation that hosts its domain, is refusing to renew the contract because of U.S. sanctions. At a time when Iranians are using the Internet to fight censorship, unplugging them from the Internet only serves Iranian government policies. U.S. sanctions should not undermine civil-society organizations and limit their access to information.

Iran's young population is fighting for the same human rights that young people enjoy in other countries, including the United States. The outcome of this struggle will reverberate across the Middle East. The United States cannot afford to undermine or ignore these efforts. Iran's burgeoning civil society needs constructive support from abroad, now more than ever.